It is known for persons to employ electric hair stylers to manipulate the shape of hair. Common electric hair stylers employ one or more resistive heating elements incorporated within heating plates that are carried by opposed jaws. Such resistive heating elements generate heat by passing an electric current through a resistive material, which causes the heating plates to heat up (typically to a temperature of around 210° C.). It will be appreciated that the heating plates when hot can potentially represent a safety risk to the user (or to others, such as children, who may come into contact with the styler), either during operation of the styler or once it has been turned off but is still at temperature.
Furthermore, the styler needs to be engineered to withstand the temperature of the heating plates when they have heated up. Accordingly, temperature resistant materials such as glass reinforced plastic are commonly required to support the heating plates. Such materials can be relatively costly to obtain and then form into the required shape. Consequently there is a desire to be able to use materials that are less expensive to obtain and form.